The Return of Controversy

This is part one of a two-part article. I promise not to wait six months until the second part comes out!!!

It starts with a very simple question, posed to me by a Shadowrun player I know in my hometown. He asked me what my most favorite and least favorite setting for Shadowrun was. Both of them came to mind instantly, and I know there will be a lot of controversy about my choices. But then, when has that stopped me?

The first part will answer the second question: What is my least favorite, as written, setting for Shadowrun? Let me go behind the scenes, back when this project was being contemplated. My view on how this setting was developed goes something like this:

T: Okay, people are wishing for another city to play in. We’ve got a couple of choices to go with, but we want to make this one huge. That way, we can charge more money for less detail.

J: Hey, we want a city of intrigue, right?

T: That is the idea.

J: Well, I was just reading this book the other day on how Berlin became such a hotbed of spying during the early years of the Cold War. Why don’t we do something like that?

T: Hmm, that has possibilities…

J: And, you know how that city had one wall? How about having more, for more intrigue?

M: But wouldn’t that cause logistical problems?

T: Oh hush. You don’t know what you are talking about. Got any more ideas?

J: Yeah, let’s do border crossings, different laws, countries all at each other’s throat, the whole bit. Oh, and we could put a lot of free spirits around the city too, so gamemasters can powergame and stomp all over their players.

M: Won’t players get upset at having so many powerful extradimensional beings in one location?

J: No. They’ll be so busy trying to decipher all the laws and customs, they won’t even begin to doubt the free spirits. Oh, and lets have the administration deadlocked, so each government only controls their little section.

T: Yeah and we’ll call it a Front Range Free Zone. And look, we can butcher the map up so the areas controlled by the CAS would have never been given to them by the UCAS, if the UCAS had any brains. You know all the industrial and commercial areas of the city.

J: This is going to be great! Let’s box it, put 2 of 6 little ‘border passes’ into the box, so people will be forced to buy multiple boxes. We’ll not include all the location descriptions Seattle had, so gamemasters will be even more confused and will have to follow the blatant stereotypes we’ve set up.

M: But, won’t the corporations be mad at a free city having so many laws and regulations? Wouldn’t they complain and do something about it?

T: Stop bringing logic into this. It is marketing at its finest. Okay, now onto our next project of making the Immortal Elves the only source of civilization…

If you haven’t guessed by now, the setting I despise the most, as written, is the Denver Boxed Set. Using postwar Berlin as the model, FASA turned the ‘Free City’ of Denver into the amalgamated, Byzantine mess in the history of mankind. Any self-respecting megacorp would take one look at the map of the city and say “No way am I building there!” Mind you, Aztechnology has a distinct advantage in they control the government of Aztlan, but when they put the walls up, might they have left workers behind? This question is the same with all the other areas. The suburbs, where people live for the most part, are not evenly distributed. All in all, it turns into a fiasco.

When FASA wrote this supplement, they emphasized way too much on individual NPCs in the city. Though giving three or four options per NPC was a good idea in theory, in practice it ate up way too many pages which could have detailed the city much better, or how the megacorps survive in the current conditions. Remember that West Berlin got the businesses and prospered, while East Berlin suffered despite getting most of the basic factories. With no airport or link to the outside, how could Aztlan survive, for example? West Berlin survived because the airport was their territory.

Now, I know you are lighting the torches and lining up the pitchforks right about now, so let me tell you a little secret…

My current campaign is set in Denver.

I changed much of the things I saw wrong with the city. I don’t see Denver as Berlin; I see Denver as Switzerland during the World Wars—the OTHER hotbed of espionage. Most gamemasters, though, do not have that kind of knowledge or background in history and business to manage such a drastic undertaking. Adam Jury is trying hard to convince me to publish my changes in The Shadowrun Supplemental, and currently I am trying to organize my scattered notes into a cohesive form to do just that. A few businesses are described, but most of the useful information is buried in the text or way overwhelmed by all the laws and charts.

You will note one section I do not criticize—the Nexus. This supplement started us down the trail to Renraku: Arcology, with the descriptions of the Otaku. It also developed the Nexus in great detail. Too bad FASA couldn’t do this kind of job with the rest of the books. I get the ‘feel’ of the Nexus, I don’t get the ‘feel’ of the various sectors.

Lastly, I will state the Shadowrun gamemaster who asked me the question that started all of this loves Denver as written. He runs a Denver campaign with a number of friends of mine involved. My personal group has a much different opinion, enjoying my version much more than the written material.

Remember, the next article is of the location I actually like the best—and I am sure it will be a shock to a number of people, and cause even more torches and pitchforks to be purchased…